RISHARD KHAN
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

There would be no new re­stric­tions or pro­to­cols im­ple­ment­ed by the gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of an im­port­ed case of COVID-19 in­fect­ed with the UK vari­ant.

This is ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, dur­ing a vir­tu­al con­fer­ence on Fri­day.  The Min­is­ter de­scribed the in­ci­dent as an "in­dex case" which was suc­cess­ful­ly con­tained by the ex­ist­ing quar­an­tine pro­to­cols.

Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh as­sured that the gov­ern­ment would not be mak­ing any "knee-jerk" or "pan­icked" re­ac­tions to the in­ci­dent but, in­stead, would be guid­ed by sci­en­tif­ic da­ta.

On Thurs­day, the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies con­firmed the pres­ence of the strain through ge­nom­ic se­quenc­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Dr Roshan Paras­ram, the vari­ant was found in a sam­ple tak­en from some­one who came in­to the coun­try ear­li­er this month, from the Unit­ed King­dom through Bar­ba­dos.